Can You Fail At Facebook?
Is there a way to fail at Facebook? All Facebook thinks so. They published an article outlining 5 ways you can fail at the largest social network online. In a nutshell:
- Don’t understand your audience
- Don’t be imaginative
- Don’t track your marketing
- Don’t build relationships with your fans
- Don’t hire social media experts
Of course, these points could apply to any type of social media marketing. But I think they are all golden.
The first step to success at any endeavor is to understand your audience. Fail to do that and you might as well not make any products.
Secondly, in this century, marketing must be innovative and imaginative. Social media marketing in particular must rely on a trigger effect: Make it interesting, keep their attention, and drive your audience to take action.
Tracking is another important aspect to any type of marketing. Many social media marketers seem to be of the mindset that tracking and analytics in social media is impossible. It isn’t. It’s also necessary.
And if you aren’t building relationships with your fans, then what are you doing on social media? Just saying.
Finally, let the experts do what they do best. You focus on your core business and let the social media experts focus on theirs. There’s no better way to succeed.
Is Viral Marketing A Planned Event?
Every day almost you hear about a successful viral marketing campaign. Many times they just happen. They’re not planned. And sometimes it isn’t even something that is marketed. It’s just a video or an article that becomes popular for some reason. It’s like serendipity.
But can you plan a viral marketing campaign? Are those things plannable?
Well, every marketer would like to think so. And, in truth, yes, you can plan a viral marketing campaign. But planning something and seeing it through to completion are two different things. Sometimes the plan just doesn’t work out.
So what’s it take to make a viral marketing plan work? It takes more than a plan. I guarantee you that.
However, it starts with a plan. If you don’t plan for the viral marketing campaign – and I mean every detail down to where you intend to submit your content and who your target audience is – then you might as well plan for it to fail. You can’t leave it to happenstance. Or serendipity.
That said, don’t expect your viral marketing campaign to succeed just because you planned it. You have to also monitor your efforts, and your results.
When you’re ready to build a viral marketing campaign and see it through to completion, find a viral marketing expert to guide you through the maze.
Three Qualities Of A Successful Viral Marketing Campaign
There are two types of viral marketing campaigns – successful and unsuccessful. Running either of those is no reflection on your skill as a marketer. Good marketers can have an unsuccessful campaign and bad marketers can get lucky and hit a home run. But there are certain principles of viral marketing that should be followed if you want your campaign to have a chance at success.
No. 1, whatever it is you are trying to promote should have some kind of popular appeal. You may have the very best motorized widget on the planet, but if your target market is smaller than a little league baseball team then quality is a small consideration. An idea has to have some popular appeal if it is to ever go viral.
Secondly, it helps get your idea into the hands of a few well connected individuals. Your product or service can be high quality and popular, but if you can’t get at least one well connected person with influence to plug it then chances are you’ll have a hard time getting it to go viral. I hate to plug it as a popularity contest, but that’s what it is. Even 100,000 average Joes won’t have as much influence as 1 kingpin with 100,000 average Joe devotees.
That last sentence needs some elaboration. 100,000 average Joes have friends and their friends listen to them, but they have no one to appeal to as an authority but themselves. The 100,000 average Joes who follow King Cheese, however, can always point to King Cheese as the authority. “Hey,” they could say to their friends, “If you don’t believe me then listen to King Cheese; he’s the man.” Those kinds of appeals work so it’s important to have at least one highly popular and influential person to like your idea enough to promote it.
Finally, your product or service has to have quality. It can be popular, but if it isn’t full of quality then popularity will wane.
Here’s to your next viral marketing campaign. May it be successful.